Illuminations
For most of my years as a working artist, I have used photographs as source material for my imagery, but sometimes photography loses its cachet for me.
In graduate school, I took a course in illuminated manuscripts and through the years that learning has persisted in my consciousness. Illuminations are set firmly in a human culture devoid of the lens, and therefore the vanity and desire that accompanies lens-based work. That is somehow cleansing for me, and in a certain way, this lens-free ethos allows for a fuller flowering of inner mythologies and portrayal of the disquiet of souls.
Each drawing reconfigures imagery and certain stylistic qualities from a single source illumination (note: additional drawings from multiple sources were added at the bottom of the page). Studying the individual panels guides me to subtexts apparent in the drawing that aren’t necessarily reflective of the narrative that the illumination portrays, and I’m interested in pulling out those subtexts and making observations about them.
